FMEA seems to be a suitable tool in the design phase of developing medical simulators. Herein, it serves as a communication medium for knowledge transfer between the medical experts and the system developers. The method encourages a reflective process and allows identification of the most important elements and scenarios that need to be trained.

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Bone sawing skill demands a high level of dexterity from the surgeon that can be achieved only with a lot of training. Sawing is a basic skill required in many procedures, such as: osteotomy, ostectomy, amputation and arthroplasty surgery. Inefficient sawing can lead in orthognathic surgery to nerve lesion, bad split and non-union. Using virtual reality technology this complications can be reduced, by training the students on simulators until they assimilate the skill. This paper presents an early prototype for a bone sawing simulator in orthognathic surgery. A voxel-based mandible model obtained from a Computer Tomography is cut by removing the voxels that are inside the saw blade. The collision detection is based on hierarchical bounding volumes. The removal process is observed both visually and haptically.

This paper focuses upon the research and development of a method for modeling human teeth. By the use of virtual reality and haptics technology an application was created, that allows dentists to prepare their next procedures or students to learn dental skills by visualizing a three-dimensional virtual human tooth and feeling real tactile sensations while touching or deforming the surface of the tooth.

Realistic haptic interaction represents an important requirement for successful virtual reality-based simulators that could replace traditional surgery training methods. This paper presents a new collision detection algorithm for long thin object used in hard tissue removal operations, e.g., sawing. The algorithm works efficiently by reducing the number of bone volume elements that needs to be checked for collision with the tool and also by reducing the number of transformations between the virtual scene coordinate systems. The algorithm is integrated into a Virtual Reality-based sawing training system for orthognathic surgery.